Jason Bailey

That ending, poetic and beautiful, is the chronological conclusion of Days; emotionally, it crests a few minutes earlier, as the two men go on a modest dinner “date” after their encounter.

Colin West’s Linoleum is the kind of movie that’s all but impossible to review with any specificity, because so much of its achievement lies in its surprises – how it seems to be doing one thing while slyly doing another, without deception, and then revealing its ultimate intentions with grace and style.

Hala is keenly observed and quietly powerful, and we’ll be hearing much more from the talented women on either side of its lens.

Their latest fusion of science fiction, character drama, dark comedy, and overwhelming paranoia, Something in the Dirt, feels like their most personal film – and not just because they wear so many hats, directing and writing and producing and editing and starring.

The kind of brainy, absorbing, all-out thrilling cinema that’s in dangerously short supply these days.

With Emily, Frances O’Connor has crafted a first film that feels like the work of an accomplished master.

What an extraordinary film this is.

This is a movie that barely speaks above a whisper, even when its characters are howling in pain inside.

Gregg, who wrote and directed, has mostly written for television, and while this is her feature directorial debut, she’s a born filmmaker.

In “Glass Onion,” the filmmaker shows absolute mastery of his genre, and his craft. It’s pure, pop pleasure.

The revelation here is Zengel, who has says little (none of it in English), yet has the presence and gravitas of a silent film actor, putting across her history and trauma primarily in her haunted eyes and loaded expressions.

An uncommonly knotty and fiercely intelligent story of assault and blame in the social media age.

This is a stunning piece of work and a triumphant fanfare for the arrival of a remarkable new talent.

Jenkins captures the humor, verve, and considerable complexity of the prose.

Catherine Called Birdy is delightfully witty, irrelevant, and modern-minded while carefully dodging the self-satisfaction and smugness that those descriptors can conjure up.

Ryan Binaco’s screenplay is full of tiny, keenly observed touches, but its greatest virtue is its attitude towards her addictions, the way it occupies her space with her, looking on passively but not judgmentally. It’s a movie that understands the desperation of alcoholism.

What Wiseman’s film boils down to, in many ways, is a much-needed dose of competency porn – a snapshot of government officials trying their very best to do better, and to be better. And that might be the story he’s really telling: a reminder that government, for all of its speed bumps and snags, can work. It can help. The people running it just have to want it to.

What is truly, and thrillingly, new here is Morris’s thematic interest. The deeper he goes into the rabbit hole with Cornwall, the more his true subject becomes apparent, as the picture becomes a penetrating investigation of the idea that great artists freely use fiction to work through the very real pain of their own lives—even in work that’s not explicitly or even transparently autobiographical.

He led a fascinating, complicated, often contradictory life, and Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed does it justice.

In its new form, The Godfather Coda is still not a masterpiece. But it’s a fine film and worthy conclusion, and its alterations – the repositioning of several scenes, the cutting of others, and a new opening closing –genuinely improve the final product.

California Split keenly and perceptively captures how someone you meet in a chance encounter can become a best friend (at least for a while) in a few short hours.

It is, in essence, a two-hour curtain call, a celebration of not only their music but their friendship, and a chance for the duo to have the last word on their legacy.

The complexity of the plotting overwhelms the picture a bit, which gets a little fuzzy in the middle – but it eventually forcefully snaps into focus, mostly by finding its spine in the simple notion that this is a movie about people under pressure.

The proximity and intimacy of the technique render Schofield and Blake’s journey more visceral, and more frightening. And as a result, at its conclusion, the catharsis lands with the force of a hammer.

It’s all so breezy and light that you just want to join them and hang out for a while, even with all the drama they’ve got brewing.

One of the masterstrokes of Sarah Gubbins’s screenplay is how deftly she underscores the differences in the perception and presentation of the sicknesses within this marriage.

Mckenzie is a good match as an actor, countering Davis’s big emotions with a quieter turn and more introverted but no less affecting. She isn’t afraid of the difficult contradictions of the character, and by the film’s end, we’re struck by how much everyday horror this young woman shoulders and sucks up.

Movies like “Earwig” defy criticism or even explanation. ... Lucile Hadžihalilović took a risk by making a movie this peculiar; it feels like the least we can do is take a risk by watching it.